The Googolplex Kid

This is a commonality which arose by chance on the main blog here, when one anon mentioned he could not remember much about his GATE experiences, aside from one kid who came up out of the blue and proceeded to excitedly spend several minutes telling him all about the Googolplex, describing all the details and minutia with great enthusiasm, as if obsessed, before falling back and never mentioning it again.

The Googolplex kid is a kid who is the child of someone in the Domestic Surveillance/informant network. They were placed in GATE to monitor the other kids, and report back to their parents on them. The reports would probably have been routed, either to the neighborhood archivist for each kid’s neighborhood, to be archived in their permanent file, or perhaps to a personal handler responsible for creating a dedicated GATE file on the kid. In my case this Googolplex test was administered around age 9, in 4th grade although the kid who administered it had been skipped ahead a grade into my class, so he was 7-8, and was the son of a single mom – common among surveillance for some reason. I had a thought of him flash through my mind, a memory of something else that happened, a month prior to the comments below, which caused me to peg him as a surveillance kid. But whatever the memory was, the revelation was quickly overwritten by the flood of data constantly flying across my screen. I am sure it will pop back into my head at some point and I will update this.

Although the Googolplex kid was performing surveillance on your group, and was probably one of multiple surveillance kids placed in the GATE program by the local domestic surveillance/informant network (some of whom may be smart and have belonged, others, not so much), what set him apart was the Googolplex test he was assigned to give. The Googolplex test involved him approaching specific kids in GATE, individually, or in a group, and excitedly telling them all about the number Googolplex (the number 10googol, or equivalently, 10(10^100))

Googolplex is a random large number, dreamt up by a nine year old, supposedly. It has no real significance, and is not used in mathematics for anything. It is not a natural constant, it is not a result or limit one will regularly encounter in mathematics. There is nothing which exists in the quantity of a googolplex, and to that extent, it is really no different from any other arbitrary large number. Despite going up through Calculus II, and reading fairly extensively, I never heard the word in my entire life, except when it was presented to me by the Googolplex Kid in my school’s GATE program, and he spent a few minutes excitedly rattling off all the facts about how many books it would take to write it out, and how many atoms there would be relative to the number of atoms in the Universe, and distances, and so on. On this site alone, we have eight GATE graduates and other high-performing targets who all had the Googolplex test applied to them, myself included.

It is most likely a test of some sort, looking to see if someone has certain qualities. To the extent is is presented to smart kids, as a peer being unusually excited by something conceptually, mathematically stupid, it is perhaps a test of one’s tendency to be affected by peer enthusiasm, to mirror peer behavior, and one’s innate mathematical nature and ability to conceptualize. Those who get excited would be either mathematically disinclined to understand the nature of infinity as young children, or alternately, their understanding of infinity could be overwhelmed by a desire to fit in with peers, and either way, they would exhibit enthusiasm. Either quality would betray a certain lack of threat they would present to any established power structure, either due to lack of mathematical conceptual ability, or susceptibility to peer pressure. Those who see excitement in their peer, and then look let down by the banal nature of it, are both, immune to peer pressure and thinking for themselves, and innately mathematical. I can remember thinking, that despite this kid seeming to be smart, I could not assume him intelligent going forward.

It may also test politeness, and perhaps any indices of curiosity would be noted, maybe being seen as indicators, of understanding that other people are different, and seeking to understand them. Probably marked down as another dangerous trait.

If anyone reading this has a child in the GATE (Gifted And Talented Enrichment) program, TAG (Talented and Gifted) program, STEPs (Special Talented Enrichment Program) or any other enrichment/advanced program, I would try to coach them to respond with enthusiasm to any presentation of the concept of Googolplex. Although surveillance may be listening in your house, and the effort to hide your child’s power level would prove futile, you might get by the net, and it would deprioritize your child in the local network’s targeting program. I would also instruct my children to not reveal how smart they are in school, and I would actually prefer my child get mid-level B’s to all A’s. There is no reason to make yourself appear as a threat, especially given how rigged society is by the secret society of Cabal and its domestic intelligence network.

Below I will archive the comments which led to this commonality being proposed as a feature of the GATE Program. The comments are from comments here.

**********************************

jeroth says:

I believe I was in during either the late 80s or very early 90s. I also remember it being mostly “hanging out” and not being pushed much at all. To this day, I thought that was odd, but I assumed it was hippie dippie “self guided learning” bullshit.

I don’t remember the covered windows, but I vaguely remember being in a very unusual classroom (it seemed cooler than a normal classroom). I think it was in a basement, so coverings might not have been needed (I can’t remember windows in general).

One thing I do clearly remember was watching the original cartoon Hobbit movie. I haven’t watched it since, so I have a feeling a rewatch might jog some old memories.

The only other thing I vividly remember is a very strange kid walking up to me and very excitedly and passionately explaining what a googleplex was. That memory, for whatever reason, has stayed sharp for decades. It’s the only personal interaction with another kid that I clearly remember. I also can’t help but wonder if it was a coincidence that we were within short walking distance of the Stanford campus, where google was founded.

Anonymous Conservative says:

Holy shit. I was always sort of passive and observing, so I didn’t make friends so much as my friends came up and made friends with me. The kid which made friends with me back then was obsessed with explaining how big a google-plex was….

And what is weird is, I have been up through college level Calculus II, and I have never, ever, heard anyone else say Google-plex until you just said it now.

And the only reason I even remember that is the kid was weirdly excited about describing it, like this was the most amazing thing in the world. He came alive, and couldn’t wait to get out his description, and looked like it should have just blown me away. All I could think was, numbers are infinite, and it was just another really big number. I couldn’t even really understand why that number got a really special name, given there was nothing really special about it, except it being an even factor of ten, as I recall. I didn’t want to interrupt what he seemed excited by, but inside I was like WTF?

And I just thought of something about him in the last month, and was like, shit, that could have been an indicator. And whatever it was I’ve lost it, because of all the other shit flowing across my radar.

Is it possible they have some sort of scripts they had kids throw at us, to gauge how we thought by how we reacted? That might be a good test of a geek kid – our ability to get excited about that would show how gullible you were, how affected by peer pressure, how driven you were to mirror peers. If a smart kid was completely unengaged by that no mtter how excitedly it was presented, he is thinking for himself, doesn’t care what peers care about, had little desire to mirror peer behavior, is probably innately mathematic, and maybe even other stuff.

The two of us, having almost exactly the same event, with exactly the same word, which nobody ever says, even mathematicians, it happens in the same program at the same age, and we happen to cross paths here. Could it all be complete, random coincidence?

I can’t tell any more. And if not, how many more are there out there.

Just a Medic says:

I recall seeing at least one performance of a similar googleplex script, perhaps several, around age 10-12. I was likewise unimpressed by “just another really big number.”

Anonymous Conservative says:

Wow. Three. So it is a script.

Anonymous says:

Make it four- but I was older. Ugh, this is giving me a gross feeling and I’m probably writing more than I should. But whatever. There’s no one IRL to compare notes with.

Googleplex dude was during my 20s. The only person I’ve ever heard say this word, and give an excited explanation, was my suspected glowie handler/(now-ex)spouse who picked me up before even graduating from his glowie feeder program at Glowie-University and immediately landing a job at the actual Google main campus. Creepiest cult I’ve ever visited. Maybe Googleplex is some sort of password, could see the test theory too – I was also disinterested but polite and then went back to my own studies.

I was never in a GATE program but that’s presumably because I was at a Catholic school that didn’t have separate tracks.

VD says:

Make it four.

everlastingphelps says:

I remember the googleplex kid. (I’m a little older, so it was middle school for me.) I think it was an article in the NYT or USA Today, not sure which. My intuition is that it was designed to catch a certain personality type, a particular archetype. I think that is what the deal is with A Catcher in the Rye and gammas. They had identified another type, and this was testing to see if we were in that group.

Bman says: (from here)

Day late, dollar short….

6th Grade – Friend was obsessed with IQ.
He introduced me to the googleplex word back then.

Another interesting tidbit…
He also was the one to identify the “standardized tests” we were given in 6th grade. He said they were IQ tests.

Interesting part is that my parents can’t ever remember getting any type of score, which my friend said his parents got.

Only other IQ test I was given was on a technical school entrance exam. The school sent out a representative and he gave me the short (30-50) question exam. According to him, it was the fastest he had ever seen. All I knew was I did well.

Eric The Awful says: (from here)

I don’t have any memories of specific people, but I do remember a handful of children that learned about the existence of that “Googolplex” number and acting very excited about it. The “Google” people changed the spelling as part of some math pun or something.

Like others have said, the number isn’t a constant and has no practical use so I didn’t understand why these geeks were so excited by it.

I don’t have experiences like AC and others, but I can remember some times when it felt like people were acting out a script around me. What was really unnerving was when people who never paid attention to me otherwise came up and started asking me questions like they were interviewing me. I never understood that.

Texas Arcane wrote : (posted here)

I managed to creep through a decade and was nearly 17 before the school psychologist acted on a tip and began to examine me more closely – discovering my astronomical IQ score at the University of Virginia when I was 9 years old and initial perfect score on the Zener cards. He took an unhealthy interest in me I knew was malign but I pretended to play along with him as though it were all very interesting.

I will never forget the third or fourth time we met and he opened with “Do you know what a GoogolPlex is? It’s a very large number. I think you’ll be curious to hear about it.” This came out of nowhere and made no sense at all. It had no prior context, especially since I had exhibited a decided lack of interest in math and numbers. I smiled and feigned interest but I thought it was so dull I had trouble believing this man could possibly have a wife at home.

 

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Texas Arcane
2 years ago

By the age of 8 I had begun to learn to play stupid around everyone. I was convinced there was a large secret control layer in society and if my intelligence became widely known it would focus attention on me like a tiger being flushed out of the bushes where it is hiding. I knew enough about child psychology to know this could be a sign of clinical paranoid schizophrenia in a young person. I had read “SILENT SNOW, SECRET SNOW” the short story about the onset of schizophrenia in a young boy and was terrified that might happen to me someday. I watched myself constantly to present as dopey and harmless. Since I moved around a lot when I was little it was easy to refine this act and it got better and better with every new crowd of kids I encountered. I was going to great lengths to play a village idiot by the time I was 10. The only time I remember coming out of this charade and feeling safe enough to be myself was in civil defense classes when I was 12 in Lincoln, Nebraska at the town hall after school. My civil defense instructors seemed to me to be the only adults I could take seriously. The others were more like machines or vicious administrators of some horrific syllabus designed to keep people in their places.
I managed to creep through a decade and was nearly 17 before the school psychologist acted on a tip and began to examine me more closely – discovering my astronomical IQ score at the University of Virginia when I was 9 years old and initial perfect score on the Zener cards.He took an unhealthy interest in me I knew was malign but I pretended to play along with him as though it were all very interesting.
I will never forget the third or fourth time we met and he opened with “Do you know what a GoogolPlex is? It’s a very large number. I think you’ll be curious to hear about it.” This came out of nowhere and made no sense at all. It had no prior context, especially since I had exhibited a decided lack of interest in math and numbers. I smiled and feigned interest but I thought it was so dull I had trouble believing this man could possibly have a wife at home.

kid
kid
Reply to  Texas Arcane
2 years ago

“Do you know what a GoogolPlex is? It’s a very large number. I think you’ll be curious to hear about it.”

My memory of my childhood was relatively bad, but this does ring a bell and it’s quite likely someone had said it to me. At that point, I actually kind of was interested in googolplex, and was also very solipsistic/gamma, so if it did happen, it appeared less nonsensical to me, and more “oh I guess these people-like objects also want to talk about what I want to talk about”.

kid
kid
2 years ago

The hilarious thing was, I remember perhaps at least two more brothers who might have discussed it with, who I was good friends with at the time. But I forgot really. I think in my class, I or someone else, perhaps a possible googolplex kid(but memory is weak) had brought it up, and I autistically went on about googolplexplex, googolplexplexplex and other X-plexes. Almost everyone else was bored by the concept.

In the 2-4 years since then a cycle happened where I became more and more “weird”/anti-social and all my friends distanced themselves from me, and the two brothers moved to a different city due to their parents’ divorce. They went on to live with their father, I never kept their contact and they never reached out to me either. I think I remembered asking their mom but she didn’t reply. I was then too depressed and still relatively anti-social/aspie to do anything about it so I was a loner until 18 or so then still was to some degree.

Back to me, it sort of wasn’t that I was all that weird but everyone got more distant nonetheless. Like actually I stayed the same but then everyone turned into normies/NPCs when they “grew up”. Wasn’t that gradual either, at the school before highschool, we were all having fun playing playground games, then less than 3 months later, in high school everyone all “grew up” and acted/seemed like they were above such childish hobbies, and the highschool was bigger than the school before so everyone I guess integrated with each other except for me. Looking back, on facebook, basically everyone who was “on par” or even slightly less than me academically in highschool appears to be very successful university/careerwise except for me.

kid
kid
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
2 years ago

> Did anything change on your path after you began showing interest in the googolplex? Did friends disappear? Did a wave of new friends show up? Did you get a mentor who showed up out of nowhere? Parents changing paths too, could be significant if they got job opportunities or laid off. Did anything change academically? Did you suddenly get sick, or get healthy? Grades change? Was this when everyone ghosted? My guess is you didn’t look that up.

> You seem to not lock in videographic memories, so it may be hard, but anything which jumped out at you as a change or strange could be vital.

I gotta say I don’t think anything all that unusual happened which I can link to it. And I imagine it wouldn’t matter what my answer was.

I probably was most into googolplex in the 1-2 years before highschool. If I remembered correctly, the two brothers and I talked about it but I really do felt as if I brought up the topic first majority of the time. Or it appeared online and I jumped on it. With the classes I honestly don’t remember. Probably I did not spend much time on it as I think I went on to obsess about other things as well. I overall probably spent less than 10 hours really talking/thinking about this(googolplex), and was probably obsessing over games or playground activities.

Friends basically disappeared almost the moment highschool happened. All of a sudden behaviors which were acceptable before highschool were “weird”. It was a group of about a core of 4 us with a ring of 3-4 more and then a few randoms they don’t know. In highschool they fractured into 3-4 cliques and I floated among them in the first year to try socialise but they made fun of me, to varying degrees of subtlety. Also about 30-40% went to a different highschool so I never saw them again, except perhaps on facebook. Also they got even more distant as time went on but most of it happened at the start of highschool.

No new wave of friends but there were some people who got kinda close either to have me as a punching bag sort of to make fun of with the “cool” clique. None of my old friends were in the cool clique. 1-2 guys were genuinely weird in a sense so I had the impression they wanted to connect with me likewise, but in the Anglo part of the world people like to rib each other a lot, so that was a part of the appeal for them. Those guys would sense we could connect in a deep way, but could also semi-pass for normie too so they would switch. This guy was deep into Joe Rogan at the time which I interpreted as subversive/into conspiracies(this was around 2010-2015). Right now he is relatively antivax.

Mentors- probably in school, the math teachers or other people who sensed I was good at math, I was the best at math other than the potential googolplex kid, but I actually don’t remember if he brought up the subject, or even if I talked with him about it at all. The math teacher I had in the first year of highschool was great, she actually cared about us, and understood us, in particular me, because the rest of the normies didn’t mind being like NPC robots to be pushed in the schooling/education cog system. And let me goof around as much as I wanted provided I wasn’t disturbing others, I guess partly because of my great performance. She had to take the next year off due to cancer treatments which was devastating to me since only one other teacher actually even slightly cared about me to that level. In my gamma/autistic self, I insisted she didn’t do chemo or anything but just looked for a natural cure(was big in into naturopathy belief, still am). But of course she didn’t listen.

No other significant mentors. Although later on, when I dropped out of highschool, parents got a bunch of social workers to try help me for about a year or two before giving up. I dropped out before I got good at calculus so potentially the others in school are better than me at math now but I was always better than the others in my year group other than said kid.

Parents got jobs/switched jobs maybe once or twice nothing out of the ordinary to me. Am not close with parents

Before highschool, grades didn’t matter, but basically would be in top 5 minimum, likely top 2-3 in the school, but in this country people are very dumb/anti-intellectual. In the big highschool, they divided the group of boys(likewise for girls) into 10 different tracks. Aced the test at the entrance to highschool, got placed into the top track the first year, and was probably top 5 intelligence-wise(but probably not perfomance-wise). Maintained a similar performance, but a bunch of people in the second track were nerds and tryhards, so dropped to the second track in the second year. Didn’t end up going to a third year. This what I meant when I said “everyone who was “on par” or even slightly less than me academically in highschool appears to be very successful university/careerwise except for me.” they were the top track people.

At a similar time in highschool I got convinced I was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome or adrenal fatigue, and brain fog, I was big into conspiracy/altsphere at the time, but probably less than now. I insisted I had an issue related to that. I think eventually after dropping out and trying a bunch of things to fix it I came to the conclusion I had depression and trying CBT mainly fixed it. It took years to recover and I still haven’t really and still have ADHD etc which I only realised recently.

Was basically jobless for all my teen life, had worked a bit after, right now I’m dysfunctional so am jobless again, but at least in a country which is more accepting to me.

I probably can visualise some memories videographically but it’s likely inaccurate except the uncommon times/amounts I somehow can retrieve the memory.

> But I guarantee you this universe is infused with a sentience which is aware of everything, and even has a plan for everyone. You need to understand what you have, was not foisted on you – it was given for what is to come.

Right now I really want a hot girlfriend, to start a family, and live on a homestead somewhere. And detach from society sort of like Unabomber or Luke Smith(Unaboomer).

In any case I wrote a bunch of my life I wonder if you can see patterns cause I sure can’t. Apparently it’s quite common for very smart children/teens, to then be into gaming, and then a lot of gamers are underachievers in life, healthygamergg(twitch psychiatrist) talks about this. So really I just seem to be one of many in this pattern, which could be more common among the targeted. What’s strange is to my knowledge no one I knew from school has had this life trajectory which makes the relative failures of my life seem more personal, rather than a rule/pattern among gamers

kid
kid
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
2 years ago

> If I were you, I would assume I had coverage trying to degrade me, and I would try to fight it by getting moving.

I do believe this is actually the most likely scenario. But it’s weird that they had gone to these lengths, when knowing myself and how little I had done, I seem unlikely to be a threat. Maybe I am only not a threat because of this though.

But also considering, since I am so careless/attention deficit, I am surprised by how much they *could* have sabotaged me but didn’t. I obviously don’t want to tempt fate, but it’s mind-boggling nonetheless. Perhaps they actually have sabotaged in a million ways to such a degree that I don’t even realise considering I’m not even aware of what my real potential is.

Knowing how evil they are I’m tempted to fight. But if they didn’t fuck with me, and just let me have a non comped girlfriend and have our family live in peace I would’ve gladly taken it.

It does feel like my body is fragile, but compared to people who have serious autoimmune conditions or the like, I am healthy. But still, in highschool I was on a natural health kick and was trying almost everything to try and be better. I could do one flaw(like bad sleep, bad food, skipping magnesium, skipping sunbathing, being exposed to chemicals etc) and feel like total trash. At the same time, most people make multiple huge flaws constantly and don’t seem to care.

I imagine I would have felt huge despair if they actually used a DEW/vibrations on me, which to my knowledge they didn’t. But perhaps they didn’t feel the need or that country didn’t have a habit of using it.

Macaque Mentality
Macaque Mentality
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
2 years ago

“One, get out of the house… Two, do anything.”

Three, pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ. Talk to God honestly and openly about everything.

“Life can turn fast. Understand that, believe, and begin preparing for the day the door opens for you.”

This, this, this!

kid
kid
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
2 years ago

> My advice to you is two fold. One, get out of the house. Travel to parks, or anywhere but where you are. Get out and about, and dont; go somewhere and sit. Keep moving for a day or two. Don’t even come here. Get out and go, and see if you feel different.

> Two, do anything. Get a lawn mower and a weed whacker and start mowing lawns. Get a job driving around delivering stuff. Just get moving in any direction, and stay as far from your home as you can, as long as you can. See what happens.

Interesting. Unfortunately this advice might be hard to do. I have huge motivation problems with doing things especially in winter. And I currently have anxiety/stress about the idea of leaving the house or being far from my current area, because I would have fear on unfamiliar territory or how I would return. Also it does feel that many of these productivity/ability to do stuff is just easy for other people but I just… am not able/motivated to do it(this is standard ADHD, from reading).

With regarding traveling far from my house. I noticed when I do a bunch of daygame(I restarted recently), I perhaps typically feel better, despite that daygame tends to cause mood swings for the daygamers. But I always would retreat back to my house when exhausted, and am able to use my computer for internet addiction. I felt better but generally still got tired. My phone sucks, so I am much more comfortable on my computer.

How would I be able to function if I just keep moving(as in, where would I stay/sleep)? I can’t afford a short term rental on a place, and suspect it might have a similar problem to staying in the current place. Also how would I deal with huge boredom without relying on internet as a crutch?

It’s entirely possible I am being fucked with by stuff being slightly sabotaged or temporarily moved/mildly destroyed. However, I have ADHD so my working memory and attention is low, and I would not be able to know for sure unless they do it blatantly. I do tend to lose/misplace things but interestingly less than my ADHD would have me guess that I do. I did have the feeling it’s entirely possible stuff is being moved without my knowledge, but it could also just be me not paying attention.

Moving is stressful for me, whenever I moved I would be so stressed/overwhelmed I would stay in place more or less and it would take weeks to recover.

I’m trying Julia Ross’s mood cure. I tried l-tyrosine for “the blahs”/adhd/low focus/concentration, and 5-htp for depression which seems to work. Now I’m going to try true calm/gaba for anxiety. I bought lemon balm tea. Julia Ross’s stuff is great, but she also did say that her goals are for people’s false moods to be zero after treatment(no depression, no blahs, no anxiety, no feeling hurt), and she can make that happen in the majority of people. Made a decent impact but my issues are nowhere near zero(yet). https://www.juliarosscures.com/mood-type-questionnaire/

Also, a bit unrelated. How do you do quotes/iitalics in comments? I had always relied on “>”. And somehow you(and some other users, probably) did it all the time but I didn’t really remember to ask earlier.

Like you, I can’t wait for the reveal, just out of sheer curiosity.

>Maybe independent thought. Some form of self-empowerment, or self-reliance, I don’t know.

That’s the thing with my dysfunction I’m actually so reliant on others especially financially, that I’m surprised they didn’t fuck with me further, given I can’t do too much about it.

kid
kid
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
2 years ago

Interesting. I have considered trying TCM yeah. Might just go to a random one nearby with good reviews.

> When you go out the front door, is there always a car driving by, or a walker on the street?

I’m in the centre of a big European city, there are cars on the main streets constantly and people are walking on the streets constantly too. I don’t think I see anything too out of the ordinary and if it happens I won’t be able to tell unless they make it overt. When I was living in the suburbs of the other country, I did not notice anything. A friend claimed that “people[on the street/in public] look at me”/stare, and apparently they don’t do it to other people. He thinks it is because I look, dress, and act weird. In Europe people dress to blend in, and I don’t, but I don’t think I seem that extreme. Perhaps SJWs often look more extreme, but looking SJW is getting common so doesn’t seem weird. Probably nothing, since it was a day where I was in fancy dress.

The anxiety of going outside is probably mostly to do with familiarity with my area, the lack of wanting to do serious cardio(like walking), or even bother to take public transit for long periods(it’s too expensive to uber for me, but only because of my bad financial situation). It’s getting warmer, but also perhaps the cold/bad weather.

I probably cannot keep moving for 14 hours straight because I don’t have the physical capability. I think when I did something like this like hiking for 5+ hours, I was physically exhausted, had fun, often felt good if I enjoyed myself but overall had to spend even more time recovering.

Although, many of the foreigners here do Uber eats or equivalent. I was thinking of doing this to supplement my savings, but the pay is low and the effort is high. It was a last resort if I didn’t get enough money elsewhere.

At the moment I don’t really have the major health issues I seemed to have had 5-10 years ago. But still suffering from ADHD(the big one). Seasonal depression too, and realising I have mild anxiety now that Julia Ross’ stuff fixes the other two. I tend to feel a lot worse in winter, which gets helped a lot by a solarium and lightbox. now 5htp is giving me an additional boost. The difference in winter and summer is vast and I tend not to remember what I felt exactly in the other season.

I’m considering trying ADHD drugs but I don’t trust the pharmaceutical system, but I do need to increase my productivity anyways.

kid
kid
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
2 years ago

A memory which stuck out at me, which sort of felt like a bit of a role reversal. In the 2nd year before highschool, there was a guy who I was friends with, almost close enough to be in our core group of 4 but was playing in a core group of 8.

One day, a bunch of us were going for a vaccination of some kind I forgot what. Perhaps tetanus or whatever. That guy sat out. For the next hour or so we were talking about the shot. I noticed he sat out, I can’t remember if others noticed but I think I was generally more observant than the others. We were talking about the pain or if we could handle it. And I think we were talking about how the nurse did a trick of saying she would “test” the needle going in before the actual shot, which hurt, and then she would reveal that the test was the actual shot. I can’t remember if I or the others brought up that he didn’t get it or made fun of him or whatever that he couldn’t handle the pain. Perhaps I did. I think I did know that his mom took him out of the shots, probably because I asked a teacher or nurse.

I don’t remember if he had a single mom or was some kind of kook, but I didn’t really meet his parents or remember doing so, so don’t know if I even knew at the time. But I had an inkling they were the kook type and I guess being antivax proved it. A few months later, I was looking up in the conspiracy/alt medicine sites about how vaccines caused a bunch of side effects, and went and praised him/his mom for being “geniuses” and that he was totally right to avoid the shots. I can’t remember, but I think I also said I was totally wrong to mock your for not taking them.

I think it was in class so not totally private but I did talk to him one on one. He sort of did a semi-uncharacteristic but not completely uncharacteristic, he did a very mild meltdown/outburst of how “he’s not a genius” and I think he told me to drop it/back off or something, but forgot exactly. I just remember being shocked and then just dropping it. I think at the time I pegged him as potentially an undercover genius even though he probably performed average in classes. Contrast this to me and the potential googolplex kid who were in sort of gamma style dick measuring contests trying to prove to each other and others watching to how smart we were. I remembered it being surprising how offended he seemed to be at me calling him a genius.

He ended up going to a different highschool, and currently his facebook account is empty. But we didn’t talk since so potentially he has a new/different facebook.

Farcesensitive
2 years ago

For whatever reason, this post doesn’t show up in the Recent Posts list at the bottom of the page.

Kelly
Kelly
2 years ago

How interesting! I didn’t hear about it from another kid, but from a teacher in my high school, who brought up to our class, which was an advanced math class. That teacher, incidentally, was probably a genius himself and had completed college before he left his teens.

Suddenly I find myself wondering why he was teaching high school at all, when he undoubtedly could have done much more.

KenK
2 years ago

I was in 1st grade, year 1971-2. I remember our teacher telling us very seriously, that the largest number was “a google”. I swear it was the biggest laugh she ever got out of us.

General's Addition
General's Addition
2 years ago

“What about googolplex plus one? What about googolplex plus two? Surely these numbers must be even more interesting! What do you think?”

You do realise that kids with math proclivities have dreadful summer camps often paid for by governments that they may be selected to attend?

What’s an eleven year old kid going to do with point set topology and knowledge of formal proofs in the Western world?

Intellectual violence?

Googolplex kid, meet the Cantor’s diagonalisation theorem kid and the inductive proof of everything kid, you three have a lot to talk about. 🙂

Anonymous
Anonymous
2 years ago

Grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s. Never in any gifted programs. Kindergarten through fourth grade in parochial school. Dad got a transfer and I spent fifth grade in a large city public school with a gifted program. Only reason I know that is because the teacher would excuse one guy every now and then to go to it. Dad got another transfer and I ended up in a small town public school from sixth grade on. Sixth grade I tended to stay to myself being new to the area. If there was a gifted program, I never knew about it. I read a lot, especially in class, but had no problems with grades. I know I scored in the 98-99 percentile in the standardized tests growing up because my Mom saved every scrap of paper I got from school as a kid. She sent it all to me when she and my Dad cleaned out their attic a few years ago. I tossed most of it, but thought those standardized test scores were cool, so I have them in my filing cabinet. I eventually got in good with a nerd group who became great friends. My googolplex kid story was in eighth grade. We were standing in front of the school getting ready to get on a bus for a field trip. I was by myself and this kid I don’t hang out with walks up and with no preamble, begins excitedly to talk about some number called googolplex, “It’s the biggest number there is!” He wasn’t in the nerd group. We loved math, and model rocketry, and developing our own photographs, and building simple computers, and ham radio, and I don’t remember the word googolplex ever coming out of our mouths. And here is this kid I barely know going on and on about it. Then he stopped, and walked away. I haven’t thought about that for years, until I read this entry of yours but the memory is one of the most crisp from that time. It made me very uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as another guy in my grade who walked up to me one day and said he was reading a book with this amazing scene. Then he opened up this book and read a scene about a bunch of guys hanging out when one drinks a bottle of ketchup. This kid then asked me if I would ever drink a bottle of ketchup? I told him no and he turned and walked away. One of the all time weirdest incidents in my life. It even tops googolplex kid.

Cephor
Cephor
2 years ago

I was given the test in the fourth grade, if I remember correctly. My ‘friend’ I had known since kindergarten and I was sent to a very strange school that focused on arts- involved a lot of dancing, performances, had a weekly play made by one of the classes, and it had its own creed/motto we memorized. I remember a particular style of clapping involved, a very specific set of claps that we were trained to respond to with another particular sequence of claps- not sure how far spread that is in other schools.
Anyways, context aside, this ‘friend’ of mine starts talking about how there is a number called ‘googol’ which is one with one hundred zeroes. Of course he didn’t stop there. “You couldn’t even fit a google amount of tv’s in this room!” And on and on he went. “And there is even a larger number- googolplex which is one with one googol zeroes!” And then he went on how big and crazy that was. I thought it was so weird. His enthusaism was so strange and out of no-where. He was always a bot. A bot, to clarify, is someone with nearly no internal ability to create something or generate interest in anything. If I got interested in something, he would show interest in that something. If our other friend got interested in something he would glom onto that too. And this kid was in an art specialized school for elementary students, and his mom was the art teacher there. Real interesting, honestly. His mom was vicious, never to me personally; but to the rest of the class, to her son, and especially to her husband. My ‘friend’ called his dad by his first name, that’s how bad it was. He had an older brother who was never around, and an older sister who already had a kid when I was nine. Needless to say they had a very strange family. All of my friends had weird families.
My ‘friend’ stopped hanging out with me when we reached the eighth grade. He had gone to a different school, some kind of private Christian academy two year prior. I remember the last conversation I had with him over the phone; he was so strange and distant, like he couldn’t say or was avoiding the reason he didn’t want to hang out. Keep in mind, his father was always the one to call on his behalf, this time I had called his house. My ‘friend’ had tried to blame me for picking on his neighbor, something we would both do and something which I apologized for afterward. I don’t think my ‘friend’ ever assumed accountability for it- he just blamed me. His mother never let him have access to his bank account up until college graduation (engineering degree). He works at a defense contractor for the government now. Very interesting. The only thing he ever seemed to be genuinely interested in life was stats, specifically with things like pokemon. His predilections towards math and his hypoagency make me think he was indoctrinated or something. If anyone else would like to share what they know of their googolplex kid I would love to hear it. As you can see I was best friends with mine, literally.

Meetu
Meetu
2 years ago

I, too, encountered the Googolplex as a child. My stepfather introduced it to me. He was a high school math teacher and also a Mensa member. I believe he brought it up around the time my elementary school was running a bunch of tests on me to see if I qualified to be in the school’s gifted class. My parents decided not to put me in any special class and that was that.
Some other factors that may or may not be relevant:

  1. My stepfather had a predilection for teenage girls and also coached a lot of girls sports teams.
  2. My stepfather stalked, harassed, and assaulted me on a daily basis for several years. I believe he was trying to break me psychologically. When that didn’t work, he did everything he could to try to sabotage my life before my mother finally turfed him.
  3. Years later, we discovered that my stepfather’s father was very involved in freemasonry. I have no idea what degree he was but they showed up to conduct his funeral. Up until then, no one knew about his connections.
  4. I have an ex-husband who acted like he liked me until he married me. Then, he turned on me and told me point blank that he was going to do everything in his power to try to destroy my life. He has since been diagnosed with mental health issues so I don’t know how relevant this is.
  5. I once had a strange experience on a bus. I was riding with a friend and she suddenly turned to me and asked me what I had just said. I said I hadn’t said anything and we both laughed about it. Then, a few minutes later, I heard her voice just outside my ear. I turned to her and asked her what she had just said and she hadn’t said anything. Someone playing with some sort of technology?
  6. During a time when a serial killer was operating in my region of the country, I heard what sounded like a baby crying outside one night. I am sure it was not a cat. The sound stopped every time I opened my bedroom window and started again every time I got settled back into my bed. I finally told my stepfather about it and he went outside and said there was nothing there. I never heard that noise again.
  7. I once had a “former” Satanist try to destroy one of my careers.
  8. My family has had people leave animal sacrifices on one of our lawns. We have also been targeted before by Wiccans in one neighborhood. One of my family members has been followed by the proverbial windowless white van. A coven member once admitted to my husband that their coven was trying to infiltrate his family’s church.
  9. I have suffered with CFS-like symptoms since my teens. Doctors cannot find anything wrong with me. Before I moved from my last residence, I was also experiencing parasthesias in my feet and legs. I haven’t felt that sensation since I moved.
  10. I have a high education and did very well at all my studies. However, my husband and I have both experienced being held back or denied opportunities or being shunted away from career success. Perhaps it is because we are both Christians?
  11. I have read all of this blog’s posts on surveillance and haven’t noticed any surveillance going on in my life. However, my family may have been targeted by a government operative just before we relocated. This lady appeared out of nowhere, seemed likeminded, and hung out with us several times. However, we connected her to some other likeminded people and after we moved, she has been hard to get hold of and hasn’t shown interest in anyone we introduced her to. She was a very fit single lady renting a house on our street. Her lack of getting together with other people after telling us how lonely she was sends up a red flag to me.

That’s all I can think of offhand. My life hasn’t been ruined by any of this but it definitely has not turned out the way I thought it would. Nevertheless, I am very happy and contented with my lot.

Last edited 2 years ago by Meetu
General's Addition
General's Addition
11 months ago

I realised that there’s an advanced maths version of this that catches people who are otherwise unaware, and it’s a kind of number theory type of Googolplex Kid thing.

It goes like this: sets have cardinality, and so do infinite sets, the idea being that sets are countable.

Except when they’re not, when they’re merely contained, and thus comes up the idea of “countably infinite” as a hack around this enumeration problem.

This is denoted first off with “aleph” (א) sets such as א<sub>0</sub>, which is the cardinality of integers (signed or unsigned).

So the trap springs when you are taught that since real numbers are represented by an integer separated from another integer with a decimal stop, for which the cardinality is א<sub>1</sub>, there can be a hierarchy of these cardinalities of infinite sets depending on their construction, such as א<sub>2</sub> which would be the cardinality of a 3-tuple or triple (x,y,z) based on integers.

Here’s the Googolplex Kid moment: “Does the cardinality go beyond ‘aleph’? What if they’re all equal? What do you think about that?”

Rudy Rucker had a bit in one of his maths books about the cardinalities of infinite sets, and proceeded to blow past “aleph” notation with “omega” notation, and so on and so on.

The fun fact of all of this is that whether א<sub>0</sub> and א<sub>1</sub> are in actuality different or represent different infinities is an unproven problem within mathematics, which in essence points to the same thing as the Googolplex Kid problem.

And so just like the Googolplex itself, “aleph” and other cardinalities of “countably infinite” sets are for any useful purposes entirely useless.

But unlike the Googolplex Kid problem, this is meant to be a hook to get you to want to study point set topology, advanced set theory, and so forth in order to solve some of these problems, <i>even if they don’t have any clear benefit</i>.

Maybe along the way, some large intelligence organisation can divert you from your studies so that you can solve big number theory problems for them instead.

If not, the governments and private organisations who fund these maths and science summer break programmes benefit from getting you to waste time thinking about problems that have no useful solutions.

Hopefully by showing you this is a waste of time, I have not added to the problem by wasting your time.  🙂

Oksinta
Oksinta
Reply to  General's Addition
11 months ago

There are so many points you make here that are either misunderstood or outright wrong. And just because something does not have a clear use right now does not mean it never will. The issue of what kind of infinite set you are dealing with comes up all the time in machine learning.

Dav
Dav
6 months ago

Also a gate student who heard about googolplex. I remember some kids kicking up a fuss about the number, taking note of it as a curiosity, then forgetting about it until I saw the company Google and thinking, “Ah, so they named themselves after that number”. Now that you mention it, pre-internet, where would the concept of googolplex even have come from muchless go ‘viral’ pre-social media?

CIA, obviously, behind both actual Google and googolplex.